Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull Read online

  “‘But that’s not all, Trev,’ said Old Gotta. ‘I dug deeper, and the skeleton was sitting on what was left of a saddle, so I dug a bit deeper, and the saddle was sitting on top of the skeleton of a horse. That mud out there must be all of thirty feet deep.’

  “I asked him,” said Uncle Trev, “if he’d dug down to see what the horse was standing on, but Old Gotta was a bit rattled.”

  I could feel my eyes grow bigger as they stared at Uncle Trev.

  He stared back. “‘We’d better go in and tell the police in Matamata about the skeleton,’ I told Old Gotta. ‘Where’s the hat?’

  “‘That’s the trouble, Trev,’ said Old Gotta. ‘I got out of that hole in the swamp and backed away. I was so scared that skeleton might come back to life and gallop after me for its hat, I dropped it and ran.’

  “‘Where’s the hole?’ I asked him, and looked out across the swamp.

  “‘The hole’s disappeared,’ said Old Gotta, ‘and I’m not game to go out there again and look for it in case the skeleton gets me by the legs and drags me down.’

  “It was getting late in the day,” Uncle Trev told me, “with the tea-tree starting to get that dull look, and it was already dark among the cabbage trees the other side of the swamp. I felt the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

  “‘Maybe we’d better come up and have a look tomorrow,’ I told Old Gotta. ‘It’s getting on, and we can’t do anything now, even if we could see.’ ”

  “Did you go back next day?” I asked Uncle Trev.

  He shook his head.

  “Something else came up, and I didn’t get across to Old Gotta’s place for a few weeks. By the time I remembered to say something to him, he seemed to have forgotten the whole business.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Going in there with a cock and bull story about a skeleton sitting on top of a horse in the middle of Old Gotta’s swamp, and not even a hat to show them…” Uncle Trev shook his head. “They’d have laughed me out of the station. Crikey, it’s later than I thought. Your mother’ll be home soon. I’d better get out to the farm. I wouldn’t –”

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I won’t say a word to her.”

  But as Uncle Trev drove away, I hoped I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night, screaming about a skeleton on a horse dragging me under the swamp.

  Chapter Eight

  Why Uncle Trev Wouldn’t Let Old Gotta Henry Have a Cup of Tea

  Mum was flying around making sandwiches, a salad, and a sponge to take along to the Women’s Institute for lunch. Somebody was coming all the way from Morrinsville to speak on pruning roses, and there was a competition for the best date scones, so she’d just taken some out of the oven.

  In the middle of getting ready, she shrieked and said, “I promised Mrs Malone a root of comfrey.” She popped out to the garden, dug it up, and found too late that she’d got dirt all over her best navy shoes that she’d already put on, and she should have known better and put on her old gardening shoes, and whatever was she thinking of?

  I lay very straight in bed, listened, and didn’t say a word.

  “That uncle of yours,” she called from the kitchen. Her footsteps were going backwards and forwards. She was in her stockings, brushing her shoes again, and washing her hands at the sink.

  “He’s coming in to keep you company.” Rip. That was the greaseproof paper being torn off to line a cake tin. That was the scones going into a basket. That was the sponge being slipped into another tin, the salad into a bowl, and that was the sandwiches being arranged on a plate. She’d be sticking bits of parsley on them, but I couldn’t hear that. Now she’d be tucking everything in with damped serviettes. And now she was wrapping some other scones in a tea towel and putting them on the rack above the stove.

  “You’re to tell him he’s not to get you excited. I don’t know which is the bigger fool: your uncle for telling you those ridiculous stories, or you for believing them.”

  Now she was fitting everything into baskets, and she’d forgotten the comfrey. “It’s all that man’s fault,” she said, wrapping it in newspaper. Crackle, crackle. “He said he’d be here by now, and there’s Mrs Burns tooting. I must run.

  “So there you are, and about time, too. There’s some date scones in the tea towel on the rack. Make yourself a cup of tea. And you’re not to go upsetting people with your silly stories. I don’t want to come home to a high temperature because of shrieking kauri trees, and skeletons riding out of the swamp.” Her voice rose. “Bye, bye.”

  Click, click. That was her shoes going down the path. Click went the gate. Clop went the car door.

  “Just watching her rage out of the house makes me feel tired,” said Uncle Trev’s voice. “Is she feeding the whole Institute?”

  “They’ve got somebody coming all the way from Morrinsville to tell them how to prune roses, and the committee have to take something for lunch, and there’s a competition for date scones, and Mum took some comfrey for Mrs Malone.”

  “They’ll be gorging away for the next fortnight if they all take as much as your mother.” Uncle Trev came out to my room. “Pruning roses? Just an excuse for those old chooks to get their heads together and have a good cackle.” He grinned. “Old Tip’s got something he wants to tell you – wouldn’t tell me what it is.”

  He whistled. A scurry across the lino, and Old Tip was licking my face and dancing all over my bed.

  “Did he tell you his secret?”

  “He’s too busy saying hello.”

  “He doesn’t want to tell you in front of me. I just hope he wiped his feet and hasn’t left any dirt on your counterpane.” Uncle Trev went out to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. “Date scones,” he said to himself, and I could tell by the click of his false teeth that he was already hoeing into them.

  We’d finished eating, and Old Tip had gulped a couple of scones, when Uncle Trev said, “Did I ever tell you about Gotta Henry’s suit of armour?”

  “You told me about the armour you made out of old milk cans, the time you were going to be a bull fighter.”

  “This was different. Me and Old Gotta, we came in to the pictures in Waharoa one Saturday night, years ago, back in the days of the silent movies, with your mother playing the piano. The big film was about some knights tricked out in suits of armour and trundling around on draught horses. They knocked each other out of the saddle with lances, hammered their helmets flat with spiked iron balls on chains, and split each other down the middle with battle-axes like giant tin-openers.

  “Old Gotta watched, fascinated. He sat silent in the buggy as we trotted home afterwards; he didn’t even say goodnight when I dropped him off. Only, as he let down his Taranaki gate, I heard him say, ‘Dong. Clang. Wallop.’

  “Next morning, I found him hammering some kerosene tins flat with the back of my axe that he’d borrowed. Old Gotta was putting together a suit of armour.

  “Just as well I went over, because he’d forgotten to milk his cows, and we only got them finished and the cans out at the gate just in time for the lorry.

  “‘Gotta hammer, Trev? Gotta pair of tin snips? Gotta few nuts and bolts?’ Well, I made Old Gotta come over to the house and have some porridge for breakfast, then we loaded up the konaki with everything he wanted to borrow, plus a whole lot more kerosene tins, and Old Toot pulled it over to his cowshed. I thought I’d better stick around and see Gotta didn’t get into any trouble.

  “We worked on his armour all that day, and after milking I went back in the evening, Old Gotta hung a kerosene lantern from the rafters, and we finished about midnight.

  “Getting into a suit of armour, it’s not too easy on your own. Old Gotta stripped down to his singlet and long red woollen underpants, and I helped him put on the cuirass, the bit that goes over your chest. Then there was the backplate, and then all the other bits lik
e sleeves, and what you’d call trouser legs if they were made out of cloth, only these were tubes hammered out of old kerosene tins.

  “Although that film we saw was silent, Old Gotta knew the name for every piece of armour. Greaves, he called the bits that covered his shins. He’d been borrowing books from me for years. ‘Gotta book, Trev?’ he’d say, and I’d lend him one. If I ever wanted to read it again, all I had to do was go over and look under his bed. It’d be there with the rest of my gear he borrowed.”

  “What book about knights did you lend him?” I asked, and Old Tip pricked his ears. He was following the story closely.

  “Don Quixote,” Uncle Trev said, “by some foreigner called Cervantes.”

  I looked at Old Tip, and saw him nod. “I read Don Quixote in the School Journal,” I said. “Sancho Panza was tossed in a blanket, and Don Quixote charged a windmill, that he thought was a giant, on his bony old horse, Rosinante.”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “I reckon that’s where Old Gotta got all the names, out of that Don Quixote book.”

  Old Tip thumped his tail on the floor. “What he means,” said Uncle Trev, “is that he’s read the book, too.

  “I’d just finished doing up all the nuts and bolts of Old Gotta’s armour with a crescent spanner, then I had to undo them again so he could go to the dunny. I went over to the house and made a cup of tea, but I wouldn’t let Old Gotta have any. ‘You’ll just get your armour on, and you’ll be wanting to take it off again,’ I told him.

  “‘Funny that, Trev,’ said Old Gotta. ‘Don Quixote never had any trouble going to the dunny. Nor did those knights we saw at the pictures.’

  “Anyway, we get him strapped and bolted inside the armour again, and he complains, ‘Me knees won’t bend. You’ve done up the nuts too tight.’ Next thing, he tries to take a couple of steps and goes over on his face with a tremendous clatter on the concrete floor of his cowshed.”

  Uncle Trev went out to the kitchen for another cup of tea, and I said, “I wouldn’t mind a suit of armour.” Old Tip thumped his tail, and I could see he was thinking the same thing.

  “You’ve got something to tell me?” I whispered, but he looked at my door. Uncle Trev was coming back with his cup of tea, and I was going to have to wait to hear Old Tip’s secret.

  “All that armour was so heavy,” said Uncle Trev, “Old Gotta couldn’t get on to his feet on his own. I tried heaving him up, but the moment I let go, he fell back with another crash.”

  “What’d you do?” I asked, and Old Tip thumped his tail again. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, too.

  Chapter Nine

  Why the Rawleigh’s Man Wouldn’t Ever Go Back Up Uncle Trev’s Road

  “The only way I could get Old Gotta on to his feet, wearing that suit of armour,” said Uncle Trev, “was to throw a rope over a rafter and hoist him up.

  “While he was hanging in mid-air, I gave him a good spin around for a couple of minutes, just for fun, then I lowered him on to his feet, and he fell over again. Too dizzy to stand up.”

  “Didn’t he complain?”

  “He moaned away inside his helmet, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. I got him on his feet again, loosened one or two nuts with the crescent, squirted a bit of oil here and there. His armour screeched, but we knew now that those old knights must have been pretty rowdy, squeaking and grinding whenever they moved. You can imagine the din when they got knocked off their horses.

  “The old silent film hadn’t told us anything about the noise. Besides, there was your mother thumping away at the piano, with one eye on the screen. And of course the kids always kicked up a hullabaloo, so it wasn’t surprising we hadn’t heard the noise from the knights’ armour.”

  “I used to like going to the pictures.”

  “You’ll be seeing them again, now you’re getting better.” Uncle Trev took a mouthful of tea. “I gave Old Gotta a tea-tree stick to keep his balance, and he strode out into the paddock and brandished the stick like a sword. We’d been working on that suit of armour all night, and it was broad daylight.

  “The magpies who lived in the belt of pines took one look and attacked Old Gotta, their beaks rattling on his armour. You should have heard him shout inside his helmet. The magpies couldn’t make out where the noise was coming from, and flew away. Funny beggars, magpies. Ever since then, they’ve nested in the macrocarpa over at my place, the one beside Old Tip’s kennel.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I went home to do my own milking and had just finished when I realised things weren’t right over at Old Gotta’s shed. Your average cow is a fairly conservative creature, you know. She wants everything the same each day. She likes to go into the same bail, and she wants the same person in the same clothes, saying the same things to her, like she’s used to. The last thing she wants is a strange suit of armour clanking round the shed and slapping on the cups.

  “The first cow Old Gotta tried to leg-rope, she kicked him sideways. He staggered backwards, and another cow butted him. They knocked him down, ran over the top of him, and donged his armour full of dents.

  “Old Tip held the cows back while I helped Gotta out of his armour, and you know he put on his old dungarees and those cows knew who he was at once and let down their milk, no trouble.

  “Old Gotta lost interest in being a knight after that. He stood the suit of armour in the spare bail in his shed, and his cows soon got used to it.

  “Then, one day, he came over and said, ‘Gotta bit of timber, Trev?’ I gave him that, and he said, ‘Gotta few nails Trev?’ Then it was, ‘Gotta hammer, Trev?’ and, ‘Gotta saw, Trev?’ I didn’t ask what he was up to, but went over later and Old Gotta was up my ladder that he’d borrowed earlier, building battlements around his roof, turning his house into a castle.

  “Now, there was a new Rawleigh’s Man working his way up our road, selling lumbago pills and furniture polish to the cockies’ wives, and we thought we’d have a bit of fun with him. Old Gotta climbed on the roof, behind his wooden battlements, and I bolted him into his armour. We had to do it up there, ’cause he couldn’t climb the ladder wearing it.

  “The new Rawleigh’s Man came bouncing across the paddock in his Model T, got out with his bag, and Old Gotta leaned over the battlements, swung a spiked ball on a chain around his head, and shouted, ‘Confound thee, base caitiff.’ ”

  “Confound thee, base caitiff,” I repeated to Old Tip, who barked.

  Uncle Trev nodded. “‘Darest thou assail my castle?’ Old Gotta swung his spiked ball, belted himself on the back of his kerosene-tin helmet, fell off the battlements, and landed on the concrete path with a noise like a brass band dropped from an aeroplane.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was sitting on Old Toot,” said Uncle Trev, “sticking my head around the corner of the house. I didn’t tell you, but I’d made myself a suit of armour, too, so I could join in the fun.

  “I shouted, giddupped Old Toot, and galloped out, waving a wooden sword painted with aluminium to make it look real. The Rawleigh’s Man thought there were two lunatics.

  “I was so worried about Old Gotta, I forgot I was wearing armour, leapt off Old Toot and landed on my back with another tremendous clang. The Rawleigh’s Man’s face turned white, but I told him, ‘Give us a hand to get off this armour. We’d better have a look at my mate.’

  “He got a spanner out of his Model T, undid my armour, and I knelt by Old Gotta’s body.”

  “Was he all right? Mr Henry, I mean?”

  “Luckily, I’d been using the tin-snips earlier to get my own armour to fit, and now I cut the dented armour off Old Gotta. All he had was a blood nose from flattening it against the inside of his helmet.

  “The Rawleigh’s Man saw the chance to demonstrate what he wanted to sell, and he rubbed Old Gotta’s nose with something out of a bottle. ‘This’ll put you r
ight. Just the thing for sprains and bruises.’ He handed me the bottle, and I saw it was horse liniment. He was a new Rawleigh’s Man.

  “That horse liniment is pretty strong stuff. Old Gotta leapt to his feet, neighing like Old Toot, hurdled the fence and charged up the bull paddock. His nasty old Jersey bull took one look, and bolted as Gotta leapt screaming into the trough. The water round his nose sizzled and bubbled as the liniment cooled down.

  “‘If I were you,’ I told the Rawleigh’s Man, ‘I’d take off before he gets out of that trough.’ He cranked his old Model T and bumped away down the paddock towards the gate. As he opened it, he looked back and saw Gotta coming after him, still wearing bits of armour, steam coming off his nose, and waving an axe he’d picked up as he ran past the house.

  “‘Make sure you close that gate, or me stock’ll get out on the road,’ Old Gotta shouted, but the Rawleigh’s Man was gone.

  “He’s never come out our way again, says everyone up our road is mad. Here, what’s up?” Uncle Trev demanded, as Old Tip growled and dived out the window.

  Next thing, Mum came in, sniffed the air, boiled the kettle, and gave Uncle Trev a cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake that had been left over from afternoon tea at the Institute.

  Uncle Trev tapped his finger on the side of his nose and winked at me. I knew what that meant, so, after he’d gone, I told Mum that Uncle Trev had said the Rawleigh’s Man had called, trying to sell some new sort of ointment for sprained backs.

  “Much chance of him selling any of that to your uncle, nor to that neighbour of his, that Mr Henry. They never do enough work to hurt their backs.”

  “Mum, Uncle Trev said he and Mr Henry were thinking of making suits of armour and having a tournament, you know, knocking each other off their horses with lances.”

  Mum came out and stood in my door. “And they like to think they’re grown men?” she said. “Don’t you imagine for a minute that you’re going to go dressing up in any suit of armour.” She sniffed. “Can I smell that dog?”